AdyarPamphlet - No202 Hypnotism and Mesmerism By: Annie Besant

Adyar Pamphlets
Hypnotism and Mesmerism
No. 202

by: Annie Besant
Contributed to Lucifer for October, 1889, edited by H.P.B.
Published in 1935
Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai [Madras] India
The Theosophist Office, Adyar, Madras. India
NOTE
MESMERISM and hypnotism differ completely in their method. In hypnotism the nerve-ends of a sense
organ are first fatigued, and then by continuance of the fatigue are temporarily paralysed; and the
paralysis spreads inwards to the sense-centre in the brain, and a state of trance results. The fatigue is
brought about by the use of some mechanical means, such as a revolving mirror, a disc, an electric light,
etc.. A frequent repetition of this fatigue predisposes the patient to fall readily into a state of trance, and
permanently weakens the sense-organs and the brain. When the Ego has left his dwelling, and the brain
is thus rendered passive, it is easy for another person to impress ideas of action upon it, and the ideas
will then be carried out by the patient, after coming out of trance, as though they were his own. In all such
cases he is the mere passive agent of the hypnotizer.
The method of true mesmerism is entirely different. The mesmerizer throws out his own Auric Fluid.....
through the etheric double, on his patient; he may thus, in the case of sickness, regularize the irregular
vibrations of the sufferer [Page iii] or share with him his own life-force, thereby increasing his vitality. For
nerve-atrophy there is no agent so curative as this, and the shrivelling cell may clairvoyantly be seen to
swell up under the flow of the life-current. The prnic current flows most readily from the tips of the
fingers, and through the eyes; passes should be made along the nerves from the centre to
circumference, with a sharp shake of the fingers away from the patient and the operator, at the end of the
pass. The hands should be washed before and after the operation and it should never be undertaken
unless the mind is quiet and health is strong. The loss of vitality should be made good by standing in the
sun, with as little clothing on as possible, breathing deeply and slowly, and retaining breath between
inspiration and exhalation as long as is convenient, i.e., not long enough to cause any struggle or
gasping. Five minutes of this should restore the prnic balance.
H.P.B.
For many years the scientific world in Germany and France has been stirred to its depths by the
experiments in hypnotism made by some of the leading physicians of each country. Both from the
philosophical and the practical sides it has been realized that the strange power which formed the subject
of investigation was one of supreme importance as its bearing on the constitution and conduct of man.
Many of the records of alleged feats by witches and wizards of the middle ages regarded by the
nineteenth century as the mere drivel of superstitious ignorance paled their ineffectual fires before the
wonders of the new experimenters, while visions of the saints received startling pendants from the
Salptrire. In Germany, the State, with [Page 2] characteristic promptitude, appears to have armed itself
against the practical dangers which threaten to assail society, with a law that forbids unqualified persons
to practise hypnotism. On the other hand, the Materialists, recognizing by a true intuition the fatal
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character of the new departure for the Materialist philosophy, assailed the experimenters with quite
theological virulence, scoffing at their experiments and decrying their motives. The famous Dr. Ludwig
Bchner whose services alike to medicine and biology have been great has vehemently attacked
those of his compatriots who have entered the new path. In the last edition of his Kraft und stoff he
speaks of the legerdemain and claptrap of magnetisers, clairvoyants, thaumaturgists, spiritualists,
hypnotists, and other jugglers. [Force and Matter, English translation, p. 338 ] Yet even he alludes to the
hypnotic as a highly interesting condition [ Ibid., p. 346] and suggests that it is probable that hypnotism
accounts for much that occurs at exhibitions of animal magnetism. He remarks, indeed that the whole
effect is [Page 3] brought about by strictly natural causes, a statement with which Theosophists, at least,
will not quarrel.
Hypnotism derived from , sleep obtained its name from its resemblance to somnambulism; in
most respects the hypnotic resembles the mesmeric or magnetic trance, but differs from it in this, that
suggestions made to a person under hypnotism are carried out when the hypnotic state has apparently
passed away, and not during the trance as in ordinary mesmerism. Everyone who has seen the
mesmerized person obey the mesmerizer, accept his fictions as facts, and perform at his bidding acts of
the most startling absurdity. But when the patient recovers his senses, the spell is broken. Not so with
hypnotism. The patient opens his eyes, walks about, goes away, performs the ordinary duties of life, but
obeys with undeviating regularity the impulse communicated by the hypnotizer, imagining all the time that
he is acting as a free agent while he is the bond-slave of anothers will. There can be little doubt,
however, that all these phenomena are but phases of the same condition. Hypnotism is a new name, not
a [Page 4] new thing, its differentia being but extensions of the old mesmerism.
From the time of Mesmer onwards attention has from time to time been directed to the curious
phenomena obtained by mesmeric passes, fixity of gaze, etc., but M.M. Binet and Fr, in their work on
Le Magnetisme Animal, [The references in the text are to the English translation issued under the title
Animal Magnetism.] give to Dr. James braid, a Manchester surgeon, the credit of being the initiator of
the scientific study of animal magnetism [ p. 67]. Magnetism and hypnotism, say these authors, are
fundamentally synonymous terms, but the first connotes a certain number of complex and extraordinary
phenomena, which have always compromised the cause of these fruitful studies. The term hypnotism is
exclusively applied to a definite nervous state, observable under certain conditions, subject to general
rules, produced by human and in no sense mysterious processes, and based on modifications of the
functions of the patients nervous system. Thus it appears that hypnotism has arisen from animal
magnetism, just as the physico-medical sciences arose [Page 5] from the occult sciences of the Middle
Ages. Braid found that many persons could hypnotize themselves by gazing fixedly at an object a little
above the head in such a position that they eyes, when fixed on it squinted or, to put the matter in a
more dignified fashion, in such a position as induced convergent and superior strabismus. the fixation of
the attention was also necessary, and Braid considers that the insensibility of idiots to hypnotism arises
from their incapacity for fixed attention [ pp. 69, 70]. At the Salptrire, Dr. Charcot and his pupils, dealing
with hysterical patients, [tudes cliniques sur la grande Hystrie, par le Docteur Paul Richer] found that
catalepsy could be produced by sudden sounds or vivid light, and that the patient could be made to pass
from the cataleptic to the somnambulic or lucid hypnotic condition by friction on the scalp, pressure on
the eyeballs, and other methods. Speaking generally, Dr, Richer states that stimulants which produce a
sudden shock to the nervous system and cause sleep by marked hysterical symptoms, [Page 6] such as
twitching of the limbs, movements of swallowing, a little foam on the lips, pharyngeal murmur, etc., give
rise to the nervous condition termed lethargy; while those which gently impress the nervous system and
cause none of the hysterical symptoms to which I have alluded, produce a sleep which comes on
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progressively and without shock, the characteristics of which, differing from those of lethargy, belong to
the special nervous state known under the name of somnambulic [ p. 519], or hypnotic. The ticking of a
watch, the steady gaze of the Doctor, magnetic passes, a verbal command, etc., will throw many subjects
into a hypnotic trance.
The condition of a hypnotized person may vary from insensibility to accute sensitiveness. The body may
be rendered insensitive to pain, so that critical operations may be performed without the use of a material
anaesthetic, and a number of such cases are on record. On the other hand hypnotization often produces
extreme hyperaesthesia. Binet and Fr say: In somnambulism (hypnotism) the senses are not merely
awake, but quickened to an extraordinary degree. Subjects feel the [Page 7] cold produced by breathing
from the mouth at a distance of several yards (Braid). Webers compasses applied to the skin, produce a
two-fold sensation with a deviation of 3 in regions where, during the waking state, it would be necessary
to give the instrument a deviation of 18 (Berger). The activity of the sense of sight is sometimes so great
that the range of sight may be doubled, as well as sharpness of vision. The sense of smell may be
developed so that the subject is able to discover by its aid the fragments of a visiting card which had
been given him to smell before it was torn up (Taguet). The hearing is so accute that a conversation
carried on, on the floor below may be overheard (Azam). These are interesting facts. We are still without
any collective work on the subject, of which it would be easy to make regular study, with the methods of
investigation we have at our disposal. More careful observations of the state of the memory have been
made, but this state has only been studied as it has been found during the same hyper-excitability as the
[Page 8] other organs of the senses (Binet and Fr, pp. 134,135).
Memory may, indeed, be rendered extraordinary vivid under hypnotism. A poem read to a hypnotized
person was repeated by her correctly; awake she had forgotten it, but on again being hypnotized she
repeated it. A patient recalled the exact menu of her dinner a week ago, though awake she could only
remember those of a day or two ago. Another gave correctly and without hesitation the name of a doctor
whom she had seen in childhood, although in her waking condition she, after some doubt, only recalled
the fact that he had been a physician in a childrens hospital.
Many of the purely physical results are interesting in themselves, but to the Theosophist, less suggestive
than those which pass into the psychical realm. Contractures can be caused, and be transferred from
one side to another, by a magnet. A limb can be rendered rigid, or can be paralysed, and so on. An
extremely curious experiment is the tracing of some words on the arm of a hypnotized subject with a
blunt probe; the doctor then [Page 9] issued the following order: This afternoon, at four oclock, you will
go to sleep, and blood will then issue from your arm, on the lines which I have now traced. The subject
fell asleep at the hour named, the letters then appeared on his left arm, and marked in relief, and of a
bright red colour, which contrasted with the general paleness of the skin, and there were even minute
drops of blood in several places. There was absolutely nothing to be seen on the right and paralysed side
(the patient was affected with hemiplagia and hemianaesthesia). Mabille subsequently heard the same
patient, in a spontaneous attack of hysteria, command his arm to bleed, and soon afterwards a
cutaneous haemorrhage just described was displayed. These strange phenomena recall, and also
explain, the bleeding stigmata which have been repeatedly observed in the subjects of religious ecstasy,
who have pictured to themselves the passion of Christ. Charcot and his pupils at the Salptrire have
often produced the effect of burns on the skin of hypnotized subjects by means of suggestion. The idea
of the burn does not take effect immediately, but after the lapse of some hours [Page 10] (Binet and Fr,
pp. 198-199). The bearing of these experiments on the supposed miraculous impressions of the sacred
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stigmata is obvious, and offers one more of the many illustrations which show that the best way to
eradicate superstition is not to deny the phenomena on which it rests, many of which are real, but to
explain to them, and to prove that they can be produced by natural means.
Muscular contractions of the limbs produce corresponding changes in the face, normally expressive of
the feelings suggested by the artificially produced attitude. Richer states A tragic attitude impresses
sternness on the face, and the brows contract. On the other hand, if the two open hands are carried to
the mouth, as in the act of blowing a kiss, a smile immediately appears on the lips. In this case the
reaction of gesture on physiognomy is very remarkable and is produced with great exactitude....One can
thus infinitely vary the attitudes. Ecstasy, prayer, humility, sadness, anger, fear, can be represented. It is,
indeed, startling to see how invariably a simple change in the position of the hands reacts on the
features. If the open [Page 11] hand is stretched outwards, the facial expression is calm and benevolent,
and changes to a smile if the arm is raised and the tips of the fingers brought to the mouth. But without
altering the attitude of the arms, it suffices to close the subjects hands to see the benevolence give place
to severity, which soon becomes anger if the clenching of the fist is increased. This phenomena may be
unilateral. If the fist is clenched on one side and carried forward as in menace, the corresponding brow
only is contracted. So if only one open hand is brought to the mouth, the smile will appear only on one
side of the face. The two different attitudes may be simultaneously impressed on the two sides of the
body, and each half of the face will reflect the corresponding expression. (p. 669).
It is possible that these muscular contractions may give rise to no corresponding emotions, although it
seems prima facie probable that where the emotions constantly find expression in gestures, the gestures
should, in their turn, arouse the emotions. Yet it may be that the link is merely between muscle and
muscle, and that the continual [Page 12] co-ordination results in a purely automatic action. We will,
therefore, pass to phenomena in which the psyche is involved, and see what strange tricks can be played
with it by the experimenter in hypnotism.
The lower senses of touch and taste and smell can be played with at will. A hypnotized patient, told that a
bird had placed itself on her knee, stroked and caressed it (Richter, p. 645). If a hallucinatory object,
such as a lamp shade, is put into the subjects hands, and he is told to press it, he experiences a
sensation of resistance and is unable to bring his hands together. ( Binet and Fr page 213). Colocynth
placed on the tongue is not tasted, odours are not smelt (Richter, p. 660). In the automatic state contact
with familiar objects brings up the action constantly associated with them; given soap and water a patient
will steadfastly wash her hands; given a match she will strike it, but is unconscious of pain if the flame
touches her; given a probing pin, she will plunge into her hand; given a book, she will begin to read it
fluently and, when the book is turned upside down, continue to read [Page 13] it aloud in the reversed
position (Richter, pp. 693, 696). This automatic stage can be made to pass into the somnambulic, where
the will is dominated, but where intelligence survives.
But it is when we come to the more intellectual sense of vision that we meet the most surprising
phenomena. On a piece of white paper a white card was placed, and an imaginary line was drawn round
this card, with a blunt pointer, without touching the paper, the patient being told that the line was being
drawn. When she awoke she was given the blank piece of paper, and she saw on it the rectangle which
had not been traced; asked to fold the paper along the line she saw, she folded it exactly so that it was
just covered by the card when the latter was placed on it (Richter, p. 723). A patient was told that she saw
a black circle; on waking she looked about, rubbed her eyes, and on being questioned complained that
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she saw a black circle in whichever direction she turned her eyes, and that it was extremely annoying
(ibid.). A portrait was said to exist on a piece of blank cardboard; when the card was [Page 14] reversed,
the portrait was reversed with it, and it disappeared when the other side of the cardboard was shown,
although the changes of position were made out of sight of the patient (Binet and Fr, p. 224). Such a
portrait is visible to the patient through an opera glass, and is magnified or diminished like a real object.
Again, a patient, Bar , was told that Dr. Charcot was present, and although he was not there she
addressed him, told to listen to the music, she heard an imaginary concert; told that a number of children
were present, she made gestures of taking them in her arms and kissing them, described the colour of
their hair and eyes; while another patient complained that their play irritated her, and that the noise they
made was intolerable.
More complex visions can be made to pass before the eyes; suggest to a patient that Paradise lies open
before her, and she will see angels, and saints, the Virgin, and so on, the details of the vision varying with
the richness of imagination of the patient. Sometimes it is the devil whose presence is suggested, and
the most vivid fear and anger [Page 15] are expressed. Surely we have here the key to the visions of
ecstatic nuns; the fixed gaze at the crucifix with upward turned eyes is the very position for selfhypnotization; the matter of the visions is suggested by the pressure of the dominant idea; while the
certitude of the patients as to the reality of the visions would be complete.
Yet more curious are the phenomena connected with the rendering of an object or a person invisible by
suggestion. Ten similar cards were shown to a hypnotized subject, and she was told that she could not
see one of them. When she was awakened that card remained invisible; and similar results were
obtained with keys, thermometers, and other objects. (Richter, p. 729). To another was said You will not
see M. X., and on waking M. X. was invisible to her. We once suggested to a hypnotic subject that she
would cease to see F , but would continue to hear his voice. On awakening the subject heard the
voice of an invisible person, and looked about the room to discover the cause of this singular
phenomenon, asking us about it with some uneasiness. We said, jestingly, [Page 16] F is dead, and it
is his ghost which speaks to you. The subject is intelligent, and in her normal state she would probably
have taken the jest at its true values; but she was dominated by the suggestion of anaesthesia, and
readily adopted the explanation. When F spoke again he said that he had died the night before, and
that his body had been taken to the post-mortem room. The subject clasped her hands with a sad
expression, and asked when he was to be buried, and she wished to be present at the religious service.
Poor young man! she said; he was not a bad man. F, wishing to see how farther credulity would go,
uttered groans and complained of the autopsy of his body which was going on. The scene then became
tragic, for the emotion of the subject caused her to fall backwards in an incipient attack of hysteria, which
we promptly arrested. (Binet and Fr, p. 312,313). The most suggestive experiment was one in which F
was rendered invisible; the subject was then awakened, an on enquiring for F was told that he had
left the [Page 17] room. She was then told that she might retire, and went towards the door against which
F had placed himself. Unable to see him she came in contact with him, and on a second experiment to
reach the door, became alarmed at the incomprehensible resistance and refused to again go near it. A
hat was placed on his head, and words cannot express the subjects surprise, since it appeared to her
that the hat was suspended in the air. Her surprise was at its height when F took off the hat and
saluted her with it several times; she saw the hat without any support, describing curves in the air. F
then put on a cloak, and she saw the cloak moving and assuming the form of a person. It is, she said,
like a hollow puppet. A number of other experiments were tried with her, leaving no doubt that she was
completely unconscious of F s presence (Binet and Fr, pp. 306-308).
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In another class of experiments the subjects personality was changed. On one occasion we told X
that she had become M.F. , and after some resistance she accepted the suggestion. On awaking she
was unable to see [Page 18] M. F , who was present; she imitated his manner, and made the gesture of
putting both her hands in her pockets of an imaginary hospital apron. From time to time she would put
her hand to her lip as if to smooth her moustache, and looked about her with assurance. But she said
nothing. We asked her whether she was acquainted with X . She hesitated for a moment, and then
replied, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders: Oh yes, a hysterical patient. What do you think of
her? She is not too wise. (ibid., p. 215, 216) Another patient personated in succession a peasant
woman, an actress, a general, an archbishop, a nun, speaking appropriately in each character (Richter,
pp. 729,730).
There is another class of phenomena which opens up serious dangers of a practical nature. A suggestion
made to a hypnotized subject may be carried out when the subject is awake, either immediately, or days
or months afterwards, and this obedience is blind to consequences and to every consideration of right or
wrong. We have a personality which is the puppet of anothers will. Dr. Richter remarks: In [Page 19] the
latter state (cataleptic) the subject is an automaton, without conscience or spontaneity, only moving
under the impulse of sensorial stimuli coming from without. The stimulus alone matters, and not the
person who supplies it. The personality of the operator is indifferent. All the responses are of the nature
of reflex actions, without any participation of the intellectual activity other than such as may be necessary
for their production. The somnambulist, on the other hand is no longer a simple machine. He is the slave
of the will of another, the veritable subject of the operator. His automatism consists in servitude and
obedience. But certain consciousness exists other than that of the waking state. A new personality is
created, which may give rise to those strange phenomena described under the name of duplication of
consciousness or of personality. There is really a somnambulic Ego while there is no cataleptic Ego (p
789).
It is in this somnambulic stage that occur the phenomena now to be considered. A hypnotized subject is
required to steal some object; sometimes she resists, but insistance [Page 20] generally overcomes this
resistance; only in a few cases has it been found impossible to conquer it. On awaking, the patient
watches her opportunity and performs the theft and here comes in the curious fact, that the subject
shows cunning and intelligence in carrying out the suggestion. One patient, told to steal the handkerchief
of a certain person, presently feigned dizziness, and staggering against the person stole the
handkerchief. In another case, the subject suddenly asked the owner of the handkerchief what he had in
his hand, and stole it as he, in surprise, looked at his hand. Another, told, to poison X with a glass of
water, offered it with the remark that it was a hot day. "If Z is armed with a paper-knife and ordered to
kill X she says, Why should I do it ? He has done me no arm'. But if the experimenter insists this slight
scruple may be overcome, and she soon says: ' If it must be done, I will do it. On awaking she regards X
with a perfidious smile, looks about her, and suddenly strikes him with the supposed dagger. The
patient will find reasons to excuse her acts; one who had struck a man with a paste-board [Page 21] knife
under suggestion was asked why she killed him. She looked at him fixedly for a moment, and then
replied with an expression of ferocity, He was an old villain, and wished to insult me (Binet and Fr,
pp. 286-291).
Without further accumulating these phenomena let us consider whether any, and if any, what explanation
of them is possible.
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And first from the standpoint of Materialism. It is possible to explain on a materialistic hypothesis the
muscular contractions and co-ordinations, and the automatic actions succeeding contact with familiar
articles. But even in the automatic stage, explanation is lacking of the fluent reading of a reversed book
by an uneducated person. It is, however, in the phenomena of memory, of vision of the non-existent, of
inhibited vision, that materialistic explanation seems to me to be impossible.
Memory is the faculty which receives the impress of our experiences, and preserves them; many of these
impressions fade, and we say we have forgotten. Yet it is clear that these impressions may be revived.
They are, therefore, not destroyed, but they are so [Page 22] faint that they sink below the threshold of
consciousness, and so no longer form a part of its normal content. If thought be but a mode of motion,
memory must be similarly regarded; but it is not possible to conceive that each impression of our past
life, recorded in consciousness, is still vibrating in some group of brain cells, only so feebly that it does
not rise above the threshold. For these same cells are continually being thrown into new groupings for
new vibrations, and these cannot all co-exist, and the fainter ones be capable of receiving fresh impulse
which may so intensify their motion as to again raise them into consciousness. Now if these vibrations =
memory, if we have only matter in motion, we know the law of dynamics sufficiently well to say that if a
body be set vibrating, and new forces successively brought to act upon it and set up new vibrations,
there will not be in that body the co-existence of each separate set of vibrations successively impressed
upon it, but it will vibrate in a way differing from each single set, and compounded of all. So that memory,
as a mode of motion, would not [Page 23] give us a record of the past, but would present us with a new
story, the resultant of all those past vibrations, and this would be ever changing, as fresh impressions,
causing new vibrations, came in to modify the resultant of the old. On the other hand, let us suppose a
conscious Ego, retaining knowledge of all its past experiences, but only able to impress such of them on
the organ of consciousness as the laws of the material organism permit, the threshold of consciousness
dividing what it can thus impress from what it cannot; that threshold would vary with the material
conditions of the moment, rising and falling with the state of the organism, and what we call memory
would be the content of the material consciousness, bounded by the threshold at any given instant. Now,
under hypnotization an extraordinary revival of the past occurs, and impressions long since faded come
out clear-cut on the tablet of memory. Is it not a possible hypothesis that the process of hypnotization
causes a shifting of the threshold of consciousness, and so brings into sight what is always there but is
normally [Page 24] concealed? The existence of the Ego is posited by Theosophy, and it seems to me that
the phenomena of hypnotization require it.
How can the Materialist explain the vision of non-existent things? We know what are the mechanical
conditions of vision in the animal body; the rays reflected from the object, the blows of the ethereal waves
on the retina, the vibrating nerve-cells, the optic centre the perception belongs to the world of mind.
But in seeing the invisible we have the perception, but with none of the steps that normally lead up to it;
the suggestion of the hypnotizer awakens the perception, and the mind creates its own object of sense to
respond to it. Again, it must be the perceptive power, not the sense channel, which is paralysed when
objects and persons become invisible. Take the case of F and his cloak; certain rays from the body of
F struck the retina of the patient, but no perception followed; for the cloak to be seen normally, the
rays from it must traverse exactly the same line as those from his body, impinge on the same retinal
cells, throw into vibration the same nervous cord, and so be [Page 25] perceived. If the inhibition were of
the nerve elements, the rays from the cloak would be stopped like those from the body round which it
was wrapped. The inhibition was not of nerve, but of mind; the operator had entered the subject world of
the patient and had laid his hand on the faculty, not on the instrument. If perception be only the result of
the vibrating cells, how comes it then that cells may vibrate and the result be absent? That in two cases
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the vibration may be equally set up, the same cells be in motion, and yet that perception follows the one
vibration and not the other? A still further complication arises when the cloak is seen, though the body is
interposed between it and the organ of vision. If perception result from cell-vibration, how can perception
arise when no cell-vibration is set up?
But it seems that it is not only active perceptive faculty that the operator may bring under his control: he
may lay hold of the will and compel the patient to acts, and so become the master of his personality. A
terrible power, yet one can no longer be regarded as doubtful, and which recalls [Page 26] old-world
stories of "possession", throwing on them a new and lurid light. How many of the tales of magic powers,
which changed people's characters and drove them in obedience to the will of the "magician", are now
explicable as hypnotic effects ? How often may the "evil eye" have caused injury by deliberate
suggestion, as Charcot thus caused a burn ? I have often thought that there must have been a basis of
fact underlying the widespread belief in witchcraft; and the possession of hypnotizing power, aided by the
exaggerations of fear and credulity, would amply suffice to account for it. The general belief in evil spirits
would lead to the ascription of the results to their agency, and the very ignorance of the nature of their
own power by the "magicians" would foster the notion of supernatural interference.
The study of hypnotism drives us, if we would remain within the realm of natural law, of causation, into
the belief that the mind is not the mere outcome of physical motion, however closely the two may be here
normally related. That while the brain is "the organ of mind on this plane, it is literally the organ and not
[Page 27] the mind; and that it is possible, so to speak, to get behind the organ and seize upon the mind
itself, dethroning the individuality assuming usurped control. On this hypothesis results of the
experiments become intelligible, and we can dimly trace the modus operandi.
Theosophists may well utilize this new departure in science to gain a hearing for their own luminous
philosophy, for the Western World cannot turn a deaf ear to the testimony of its own experts, and the
experiments of those very experts force on the thought the impossibility of the mind and the will being the
mere result of molecular vibration. Once carry a thoughtful Materialist so far, and he will be bound to go
farther, and thus the very triumph of Materialistic science shall lead to the downfall of its philosophy. [Page
28]
PART 2
Contributed to The Universal Review, for February, 1890.
I - THE HISTORY
THE attention of the scientific world in France and in Germany has long been directed to the curious
phenomena which are classed as "hypnotic", and for years past experiments of the most searching
character have been carried on by experts, notably at the Salptrire and in Nancy. In Germany,
Heidenhain, one of the most eminent of German physiologists, has, since 1880, been investigating these
phenomena, attracted thereto by the experiments of Carl Hansen, a Dane, the gentleman who in October
last founded a Hypnotic Society in London, for the systematic study and use of Hypnotism. The
phenomena are interesting, not only as being curious in themselves, and as promising to place in the
hands of the physician a useful therapeutic [Page 29] agent , but also the light they throw on the psychical
constitution of man, and on those subtle problems of life and mind which occupy the attention of the
accutest thinkers of our time.
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There can be no doubt, in the light of our present knowledge, that many of the "miraculous cures
credited to prophet and saint were the results of magnetic power; that the ecstasy of the saint is
reproduced in the hypnotic trance; that witches and wizards may be rivalled by the mesmerizer. Much
that was obscure is now illuminated, and the Salptrire patient explains the sybil and the seeress. We
see prophecies, visions, possessions, the evil eye, magic control, all reproduced under conditions which
render possible careful scrutiny and deliberate investigation.
The scope of hypnotism will, however, be poorly understood if we confine ourselves to the rigid
experimentation of the French doctors. Valuable as is their work, placing hypnotism among the
experimental sciences on a basis that none can challenge, we shall only understand its bearing by
studying it from a standpoint that renders visible a wider horizon, [Page 30] and enables us to see it in
relation to its historical evolution, as well as in its most modern presentment.
The soothing and curative power that lies in the human touch was known long ere the resemblance of
some of its properties to those of the magnet gave rise to the name of Animal Magnetism. Solon (B.C.
637-558) speaks of the fury of disease being soothed by the gentle stroking of the hand, [ Apud
Stobaeum. Translated in Stanley's History of Philosophy, 1666] and in China the origin of the practice of
curing diseases by the laying on of hands is lost in antiquity. Celsus records the fact that Asclepiades, the
Greek father of physic", practised light friction, as a means of inducing sleep in phrensy and insanity;
and, what is more remarkable, he says that by too much friction there was a danger of inducing lethargy".
[Somnolism and Psychism, By J. W. Haddock, M.D., 1851, p. 7]. The Chaldean priests, the Parss, the
Hindus, and other civilized people of antiquity, also practised cure by touch. There can be little doubt that
this custom is alluded to in 2 Kings v, 11, where Naaman is represented as saying that he [Page 31]
thought the Jewish prophet would "strike his hand over the place and recover the leper. The Egyptian
sculptures show figures in magnetic positions, and the habit of taking to the sick cloths impregnated with
a holy person is often met with in antiquity, and is spoken of in Acts xix, 12. The cures wrought by
Vespasian at Alexandria, as recorded by Suetonius and Tacitus, were obviously magnetic, and the idea
of the curative properties of the Kings touch was but an inheritance from the time when the priestly
functions attached to the royal office carried with them this healing power.
Nor was this use of human magnetism for the cure of diseases the only kind of magnetic phenomenon
known to the ancients. Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, and other classical authors mention somnambulism,
a state which may supervene naturally or be artificially induced, and is, in either case, a phenomenon
now included under "hypnotism. Nor can there be much doubt as to the nature of the utterances of the
sacred virgins in pagan temples. Of these Dr. Haddock says: [Page 32]
"From what is known of the practices, the long vigils and fastings, and the peculiar attitudes and manners
of the sybils, there can be little doubt that by various means, kept secret from the multitude, a condition
similar if not identical with the higher mesmeric, or psychic state, as it is proposed to call it, was induced;
and that the sybils and utterers of oracles were, at times, really clairvoyant and in a state of trance. Saint
Justin said that the sybils spoke many great things with justice and with truth, and that when the instinct
which animated them ceased to exist, they lost the recollection of all they had declared'. It will be seen in
the sequel that this is so strikingly in accordance with the mesmeric sleep or trance as to leave scarcely a
doubt of its identity with it". [ ibid. pp. 6. 7]
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It is not definitely known when the properties of magnetized iron and steel were first discovered, the
Chinese claiming to be the first to use the compass, but it is certain that the use of the magnet for
curative purposes can point to a respectable antiquity. Paracelsus (A.D. 1493-1541) seems to have been
[Page 33] the first, among Westerns at least, to ascribe magnetism to the human body, and to suggest the
use of this human magnetism for the cure of disease; in his time magnets must have been used for this
purpose, as we can judge not only from his expression of "human magnetism". but also from a work by
Cardan, dated 1584, in which "there is an account of an experiment in anaesthesia, produced by the
magnet", and it is stated that "it was then customary to magnetise rings, which were worn round the neck
or the arm, in order to cure nervous diseases. [ Animal Magnetism, by Binet and Fr. English
Translation, 1888, p. 2]
Pomponatius (A. D. 1462-1525) had already pointed to the fact, which he speaks of as generally
acknowledged, that some persons "gifted with the faculty of curing certain diseases, in virtue of an
emanation from themselves which by the power of the will and imagination they are able to direct to the
sick", [ Human Magnetism, by W. Newnham, 1845, pp. 149, 150] "When those who are endowed with
this faculty", says Pomponatius, "operate by employing the force of the imagination and [Page 34] the will,
this force affects their blood and their spirits, which produce the intended effects, by means of an
evaporation thrown outwards". [Quoted in lsis Revelata, by J. C. Colquhoun, 1836, vol i. p. 152] He
considers that health may be communicated to a sick person, as disease may be communicated to a
healthy one; and he alleges that matter, the elements themselves can be made subject to man by this
magnetic force. In 1621 the celebrated Van Helmont (A. D. 1577-1644) published in Paris a remarkable
work on The Magnetic Cure of Wounds, in which he defended magnetism as a curative agent, as against
a Jesuit, Father Robert, who had maintained that certain cures were the work of the devil. "Magnetism",
he writes, "is a universal agent; there is nothing new in it but the name; and it is a paradox only to those
who are disposed to ridicule everything, and who ascribe to the influence of Satan all those phenomena
which they cannot explain". He defines magnetism as "that occult influence which bodies exert over each
other at a distance, whether by attraction or by [Page 35] repulsion", and considers that it acts through a
fluid, the Magnale Magnum, an ethereal spirit which penetrates all bodies, and in the human frame is
found in the blood, and is directed by the will. Man can so use it as to affect objects at a distance, and the
strength of his impulsion depends on the energy and concentration of his volition. This magical power
lies dormant in man. So thoroughly convinced was Van Helmont of the reality of the magnetic force, that
when the plague was raging at Brussels, he went thither to tend the sick. [See Isis Revelata, vol i, pp.
154-161] Many other authors wrote on the same lines during the seventeenth century, as Sir Kenelm
Digby, in 1660, William Maxwell, 1679, and Robert Fludd. A remarkable quotation from a work published
in 1673 by Sebastian Wirdig, is given by Mr. Colquhoun: "Totus mundus constat et positus est in
magnetismo; omnes sublunarium vicissitudines fiunt per magnetismum; vita conservatur magnetismo;
interitus omnium rerurrm fiunt per magnetismum". [ ibid., p. 150].
In 1889, Dr. Buck writes, in words that are [Page 36] wellnigh an echo of the seventeenth century
philosopher: "We thus discern an underlying substance everywhere diffused, of great tenuity, permeating
all things as the common basis of matter and force. This substance, with its characteristic polarizing
tendency, and its universal diffusibility , outwardly displayed in atoms of the elements and in all objective
phenomenal nature, is magnetism". [ A Study of Man, by J. D. Buck. M.D., 1889, p. 31]
One of the most remarkable of the practical magnetizers of the seventeenth century was an Irish
gentleman, named Valentine Greatrakes, who published an autobiographical sketch in 1666. Among his
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patients were the philosopher Cudworth and the astronomer Flamsteed, while Robert Boyle, President of
the Royal Society, bears witness to the reality of his cures. Dr. George Rust, Bishop of Derry, writes as
follows on what he himself saw, and his testimony is confirmed by members of the Royal Society,
physicians, and others, who carefully examined into the alleged facts:
"I was three weeks together with him at my Lord Conway's, and saw him I think, lay his [Page 37] hands
upon a thousand persons; and really there is something in it more than ordinary; but I am convinced it is
not miraculous. I have seen pains strangely fly before his hands, till he hath chased them out of the body
dimness cleared and deafness cured by his touch; twenty persons, at several times, in fits of the
falling sickness, were in two or three minutes brought to themselves, so as to tell where their pain was;
and then he hath pursued it till he hath drawn it out at some extreme part; running sores of the king's evil
dried up, and kernels brought to a suppuration by his hand; grievous sores of many months date in a few
days healed; obstructions and stoppings removed; cancerous knots in the breast dissolved, etc.."
The Bishop says further that the cures often took some time, and that patients often relapsed, while with
others he could do nothing. His method was placing his hand on the affected part and stroking lightly
from above downwards. The Royal Society considered that there was a sanative influence in Mr.
Greatrakess body", and in a book which contains an article on the cures by Robert [Page 38] Boyle, is a
remarkable cure of leprosy by " stroaking " by Greatrakes. [ lsis Revelata, Vol. 1, pp. 203 to 207. See
also Newnhams Human Magnetism, pp. 150, 151, and Somnolism and Psychism, pp. 8, 9]
In the eighteenth century John Joseph Gassner (born 1727) performed a number of cures, chiefly among
patients suffering from epilepsy and other nervous complaints; a full account may be read in the German
Archiv fr den Thierschen Magnetismus, published at Leipzig.
From this rough sketch it will be seen when the man was born who was destined to give his name to this
little-understood natural force, its existence had long been known, and it had been largely utilized.
Anthony Mesmer (1734-1815) was born, some say at Weiler Germany, some, at Mersburg, in
Switzerland, and while still young went to Vienna to study medicine. He did not take his doctor's degree
until 1766, when he chose for his subject "The influence of the Planets on the Human Body", following
Paracelsus in the theory that the planets influenced the human body through a subtle magnetic fluid. A
Jesuit professor of Astronomy at Vienna, named [Page 39] Hehl, drew his attention to the loadstone as a
curative agent, and Mesmer and Hehl together performed a number of experiments with magnetized
steel plates. Some jealousy arose between them, apparently from Mesmer having discovered that
"magnetic passes", movements of the hand from above downwards, much increased the value of the
steel plates; what is certain is that Mesmer and Hehl fell out, and that Mesmer's proceedings so roused
against him the Medical Faculty of Vienna that he was obliged to leave that city. He visited various towns,
performing many cures in the hospitals and elsewhere, and after a varied experience came to the
conclusion that the human body could produce effects similar to those produced by the magnet, and that
animal magnetism" was a powerful curative agent. About this time a man named Perkins, in England,
patented for the cure of disease some metallic tractors, which appear to have resembled the steel
plates of Mesmer and Hehl; Perkins, however, did not grasp the luminous idea of Mesmer, that the
curative power lay in the human body, and his discovery was discredited when [Page 40] Drs. Haygarth
and Falconer produced with wooden tractors results similar to those produced by his metallic ones, [
Somnolism and Psychism, pp. 9, 10] Mesmer, who had hold of the right principle, proceeded with his
cures, and in 1778 arrived in Paris, whither his fame had proceeded him. He published in 1779 a
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pamphlet, in which he laid down his theory of animal magnetism, claiming that his "system would furnish
fresh knowledge of the nature of fire and light, as well as of the theory of attraction, of flux and reflux
magnet and electricity. "This principle can cure nervous diseases directly and others indirectly. By its aid
the physician is enlightened as to the use of drugs; he perfects their action, provokes and directs at his
will salutary crises, so as to completely master them". He summarized his twenty-seven propositions,
many of which are recognized as true today, however startling they may have appeared to be to the
science of the eighteenth century. The human body, he alleged, showed polarity a fruitful idea,
destined to have great results and animal magnetism could be communicated to [Page 41] living and
non-living agents, and operate from afar. Mesmer's first convert was Dr. DEslon, but doctors for the most
part were bitterly hostile, and the Medical Faculty of Paris suspended Dr. D Eslon and denounced
Mesmer and all his works, finally, in 1784, prohibiting the practice of animal magnetism by doctors under
penalty of expulsion.
Despite this official excommunication, Mesmer had the bad taste to continue performing cures, and
Paris, palpitating with new ideas, intoxicated with new liberty, went wellnigh mad over him. Fashionable
society thronged his consulting room and fought for admission at his doors. Unfortunately Mesmer was
not strong enough to master his own popularity, and lent himself to follies which brought discredit on his
really great powers. Clad in purple silk, he wandered through the crowd of patients, amid soft music, in
carefully subdued light, touching one with a metallic rod, another with the hand, provoking and controlling
passionate excitement. The patients were seated round a baquet, or trough, the contents of which set up
a magnetic current; they were [Page 42] mostly dilettante, hysterical, credulous men and women of the
court, in search new excitement. What wonder that such a crowd, dominated by the handsome presence
and undoubtedly strong magnetic powers of the marvellous doctor, with the expectation of the wonderful
ensuring its own realization, with the hysterical contagion to which a crowd is always liable, what wonder
that convulsive crises were provoked, and scandalous scenes enacted ?
Outside Paris, numerous "Harmonic Societies" were established, the members of which magnetized the
sick poor gratuitously, and communicated to each other the noteworthy facts which occurred within their
experience. [See Isis Revelata, Vol. i, pp. 238, 239. In this learned work is given a very full account of
Mesmer, and the reader who desires to investigate the whole question of Animal Magnetism can find no
more useful treatise, as it is crowded with references to the literature of the subject in ancient and
modern times] At last it was felt that it was necessary to institute a careful inquiry into the whole subject,
and Louis XVI, in 1784 issued a mandate to the Medical Faculty of Paris, desiring them to appoint
commissioners and draw up a report. Two Commissions [Page 43] were appointed, one of members of the
Academy of Sciences, including such men as Franklin, Bailly, Lavoisier, and Guillotin; the other of
members of the Society of Physicians, among whom De Jussieu was the most famous. These
Commissions reported against Mesmer, considering that his cures were due to the imagination of the
patients, and that his system was injurious to morality. Attention was drawn in a special report to the
details of the system. "The magnetiser generally keeps the patient's knees enclosed in his own", "the
hand is laid on the hypochondriac region" and other sensitive parts of the body, and thus crises were
provoked of a hysterical nature, detrimental to moral dignity and self-control. "Imagination, imitation,
touches, such are the real causes of the effects attributed to animal magnetism. The methods of
magnetism being dangerous, it follows that all public treatment in which magnetic practices are used
must, in the long run, have the most lamentable results". But among these eminent men one of the most
eminent dissented from the report presented by his Commission, and, while combating [Page 44] the
theory of magnetism, refused to refer to imagination all the strange phenomena he watched with the
trained observation of a naturalist. Of this dissident, De Jussieu, Dr. Paul Richer says:
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"A faithful and accurate observer, he noted facts that had escaped the attention of the commissioners, or
that they had voluntarily neglected. These facts are not beyond criticism, and moreover they are
insufficient as the foundation of a theory, be it what it may. But it is not the less true that De Jussieu is the
one savant who suspected that among all the phenomena, more or less strange and incoherent, then put
to the debit and credit of animal magnetism, there were some in which the unknown was lying hidden,
worthy of profound examination, and meriting something better than disdain or a simple nonacceptance". [ La Nouvelle Revue, August, 1882. " Magntisme Animal et Hypnotisme". par Paul Richer]
The insight of De Jussieu was to be justified by the future. It may be noted that Cuvier (1769 to 1832),
who was in 1800 appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy in [Page 45] the Collge de France, later
endorsed De Jussieu rather than his colleagues. In the second volume of his Anatomie Compare he
writes:
I must confess that it is very difficult to distinguish the effect of the imagination of the patient from the
physical effect produced by the operator. The effects, however, which produced upon persons already
insensible before the commencement of the operation, those which take place in others after the
operation has deprived them of sensibility, and those which are manifested by animals, do not permit us
to doubt that the proximity of two animated bodies, in certain positions and with certain motions, has a
real effect, independently of all participation of the imagination of one of them. It seems sufficiently
evident, too, that these effects are owing to some sort of communication which is established between
their nervous systems. [Quoted in lsis Revelata, Vol. 1, p. 74]
The belief in Animal Magnetism, which was now spoken of as Mesmerism, was not, however, to be
crushed out by the unfavourable [Page 46] reports of the Commissions. As Mr. Colquhoun well says, the
facts "almost daily disclosed were much too numerous, too unambiguous, and too firmly established, to
be overthrown even by the united force of learning, prejudice, ingenuity, ridicule, invective, and
persecution". In Germany, Lavater, in 1787, drew to it the attention of the medical world, and it has since
steadily flourished there, and has given birth to a widespread scientific literature. In France, despite the
Revolution its study proceeded, although Mesmer left the country, [ Mesmer died in 1815, at Mersburg,
on the Lake of Constance deeply beloved of the poor, to whose treatment he consecrated his powers in
his later years] and three distinct schools of magnetism were established: that of Mesmer, proceeding by
touches, friction, and pressure, use of the baquet, of magnetized water and plates applied to the
stomach; a treatment provocative of violent convulsions and crises; that of Barbarin, which disregarded
physical means and relied on the will of the operator and the most celebrated of all, that of Marquis
Chastenet de Puysegur, a pupil of Mesmer, who took for his motto "Croyez et veuillez, and used
magnetic passes without [Page 47] contact. De Puysegur practised chiefly on peasants of his vicinity, and
worked a large number of cures, full accounts of which may be read in his published works. [ In the third
edition, 1820, of his Mmoires pour servir lhistoire et a l'tablissement du Magntisme Animal I find
no less than eight works advertised as from his pen. The Mmoires has for stamp a heartsease,
surrounded by rays and ringed with the words, Thought moves matter.. ] It is to De Puysegur that we
owe the first description of the magnetic trance, or lucid somnambulism, a discovery since so fruitful in
results. A young peasant, named Victor, was suffering an affection of the chest, and was magnetised by
De Puysegur, who thus describes the case:
What was my surprise to see, in seven minutes, this man fall into a tranquil sleep in my arms, without
convulsions or pains! I hastened the crisis, a proceeding that caused some giddiness; he spoke aloud on
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matters of business. When it seemed to me that his thoughts must affect him unpleasantly, I stopped
them, and sought to inspire merrier ones; this did not require much effort, and he became quite content,
fancying that he was drawing for a prize, dancing at a fte, etc...... [Page 48] I encouraged these ideas in
him, and thus obliged him to move actively in his chair, as though dancing to a tune which, by singing it
mentally, I made him repeat out loud". [Mmoires, pp. 21, 22]
De Puysegur tells us of a peasant the most stupid man in the countryside, who taught him methods of
magnetizing when in the clairvoyant" state, and relates how his patient, in the magnetic state, was no
longer stupid, scarce able to stumble through a sentence, but becomes a being I can hardly describe, to
whom I need not speak, for he understands and answers me if I merely think in his presence". [ ibid., pp.
27-29. The student will find a large number of instructive cases in this work ] This lucid somnambulic
state, as it has since been termed, attracted general attention, and the popularity of De Puysegur rivalled
that of Mesmer.
Gradually doctor after doctor in France experimented in Animal Magnetism, or Mesmerism, with varying
results. In 1820, in consequence of the investigations of a young medical man, Dr. A. Bertrand, the
hospitals were opened for experiments, and the student [Page 49] may read Baron Du Potet's large
collection of experiences. He relates some remarkable cures wrought by himself; but the unreliability" of
the little-understood natural agent in different hands, and the prejudice of the medical profession, barred
the way to its general adoption. [Manuel de ltudiant Magntiseur, par Baron Du Potet, Quatrime
Edition Paris, 1868] Experiments successfully performed by one person on one day, failed at the hands
of another person on the next day, and, the conditions of success not yet being understood, the failure
seemed inexplicable and discouragement supervened. It was forgotten that, in the investigation of every
newly-discovered natural force, similar successes and failures occurred; and it was as rash to denounce
Animal Magnetism as unreliable because beginners blundered, as to deny that electricity could be
produced by friction because a machine working in a moisture-laden atmosphere threw off no sparks.
In 1825, however, Animal Magnetism had progressed so much that it again applied in Paris for scientific
imprimatur, and after [Page 50] five years of patient investigation a Commission, named by the Academy
of Medicine, reported strongly in its favour, and declared that "the Academy should encourage research
into Animal Magnetism, as a very curious branch of psychology and natural history. [Nouvelle Revue, loc.
cit., p. 593] But the reading of this report, presented by M. Husson, raised a storm; one doctor declared
that the Academy was being entertained with miracles, and another, that if the alleged facts were true
they would destroy half our physiological knowledge; so that, finally, the report was shelved. In 1837,
another Commission, composed almost entirely of the opponents of magnetism, was appointed, and
another report issued, this time, as was expected, in hostility; this report was adopted by the Academy,
and was clinched by the offer of a prize of 3,000 francs by M. Burdin, to anyone who could read without
using the eyes and in darkness. M. Pigeaire, a doctor of Montpelier, submitted his daughter, who was
able to read with her eyes bandaged, when in the magnetic trance; a commission was thereupon
appointed to examine this child, who had her eyes [Page 51] covered with cotton-wool, and then carefully
bandaged; the judges appear to have been harsh, and to have distressed the sensitive, who was
accustomed to use the tips of her fingers for reading, as do many somnambulists, and after much
discussion the prize remained unawarded. M. Pigeaire then offered a prize of 30,000 francs to anyone,
not in the magnetic trance, who could read, wearing his daughters bandage, and this prize also
remained unwon. It may be remarked that the tips of the fingers, the pit of the stomach, and the centre of
the crown of the head, are used by somnambulists for reading; a book placed in contact with one of
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these parts of the body is fluently read.

So for as France was concerned, Animal Magnetism now remained under a cloud, but in England it made
great progress. Dr. Abercrombie, Dr. Haddock, Dr. Elliott, and many others, investigated it, and in most
cases practised it, and with remarkable success. But the founder of the modern school of hypnotism"
was Dr. Braid, a Manchester surgeon, who seeing some experiments performed by Lafontaine, a Swiss
mesmerist, in [Page 52] 1841, and believing him to be fraudulent set himself to work to discover the
supposed imposition. He, however, came to the conclusion that the incapacity of the mesmerised patient
to open his eyes was a real incapacity, and he began to experiment upon his friends, with the view of
producing a similar phenomenon. He found that this closing of the eyes could be brought about by a fixed
gaze at an object placed slightly above the eyes, so that a convergent strabismus was induced. When
the hypnotic state was thus obtained, he found that the patient could be readily influenced, and that, by
placing him in given attitudes, the emotions normally expressed by these attitudes could be produced in
him at will. He further discovered that the senses often become abnormally acute under hypnotism, and
that hallucinations could be imposed on the subject by "suggestion, i.e., that a direction to see
something on awaking was followed by a hallucination when the subject came out of the trance condition.
Since the time of Braid, the whole question has been studied in the most strictly scientific spirit,
experiments have been performed under [Page 53] rigid test conditions, and hypnotism is no longer an
alien in the scientific world, but an accepted denizen, well worthy of careful attention. The world-famous
experiments of Charcot and his colleagues at the Salptrire, and those of Libault at Nancy, have for
ever rendered impossible the recurrence of the follies of 1784 and 1837. The revival of the study in
France was due to the experiments of Azam, a Bordeaux surgeon, in 1850, and various works on it
appeared up to the year 1866, when Libault published the results of his investigations. In 1878, the
Salptrire school first attracted public notice, and from that time forward scepticism has been replaced
by study in the scientific world.
In the Salptrire every source of modern science has been utilized to shut out the possibility of fraud,
and those who doubt the results, startled by their amazing character, will do well to study Dr. Paul
Richer's monumental work, tudes Cliniques sur la Grande Hystrie, ou Hystero-pilepsie. It has been
found by numerous experiments that the tracings obtained by attaching a [Page 54] tambour to the arm
and a pneumatograph to the chest of a subject thrown into cataleptic state are wholly different from those
obtained from a subject in the normal condition; for instance, while a strong man may simulate some
forced position, and the eye of the observer may be unable to distinguish any difference between his
attitude and that of a cataleptic patient placed in a similar attitude, yet the strain in his case will be made
evident by the tracings obtained from him, which are wholly different from those obtained from the other.
Thus the tracing of the respiration of a person in hypnotic catalepsy showed smoothly-rounded curves,
while the tambour on the limb gave an absolutely straight line; on the other hand, the respiratory tracing
from a man who imitated the attitude showed sudden dives jerks, becoming sharper and sharper as the
moments passed, and the tracing from extended limb, at first fairly straight, showed muscular tremors
increasing in violence as the strain was prolonged. By these rigid tests was fraud excluded, and the
certainty of the abnormal state established. [Page 55]
There are many ways in which the object can be thrown into the magnetic trance, such as holding the
hands and gazing fixedly into the eyes, making downward passes over the face and trunk, placing the
thumb on the forehead while the fingers rest lightly on the crown of the head, etc.. At the Salptrire, the
operators, dealing with hysterical patients, have generally thrown the subject into the rigid cataleptic state
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first, by a sudden noise, as a blow on a gong, the flash of the electric light, or other sudden sensestimulus; a slower way is a continued slight stimulus, as looking upwards at a dark or bright object as
in Braid's experiments. The subject may be made to pass from this cataleptic into the lethargic state by
further stimulus, and from this into the "hypnotic", or lucid somnambulic, by light friction of the scalp. The
true hypnotic lethargy is distinguished from catalepsy once more by respiratory tracings, those obtained
from a subject passing from lethargy into catalepsy showing the change in the most unmistakable way,
while a further check has been secured by making tracings [Page 56] of the circulatory changes (by the of
the plethysmograph and air-sphymograph), which are as marked as those of the respiration. [ See on
these tracings Binet and Fr's work quoted before pp. 120, 134, where a number of these tracings are
given; and, for greater detail. P. Richer's tudes, pp 337-355 and 757-768]
- II - THE FACTS
As long ago as 1636 Daniel Schwenter hypnotized a cock by tying its legs together, and placing its beak
at the end of a chalk line drawn along the ground, an experiment still frequently repeated with success;
the tying of the legs is quite unnecessary, as the animal remains motionless if the beak be held on the
line for a few moments. Experiments on animals are satisfactory in so far as the possibility of fraud is
here excluded, but of course only physical phenomena can be obtained from them. One word of warning
is advisable, however, to any who embark on this line of investigation, especially if they practise on the
domestic cat or any of the canine race. There is a moment, just before [Page 57] success, when the
animal is roused to rage probably by terror and will spring at the operator. Any start or blenching
then means failure, and an ugly bite or scratch may be the result.
The facts of Animal Magnetism, for purposes of study, may be conveniently classed under three heads:
1. Its use as a therapeutic agent. 2. The exaltation under it of the physical senses and mental capacities.
3. The control of the subject by the operator.
1. Its use as a therapeutic agent. The cures worked by Greatrakes, Mesmer, Du Potet and other
mesmerizers have already been alluded to, and during the present century a vast number of cures have
been affected. Dr. Haddock records a case of blindness cured by him. A little girl of seven began to
exhibit symptoms of cerebral affection, with partial paralysis, and eventually became totally blind; the
child was brought to him, and by him submitted to a clairvoyante, who attributed the blindness to the
state of the roots of the optic nerve and the disordered condition of the nervous system. The child was
mesmerized everyday, and at the end of three weeks [Page 58] began to perceive light, improving
gradually until she was able to read large print. This occurred at the close of the summer of 1849 and at
the end of 1850 the child had regained her sight, but was somewhat short-sighted. [Somnolism and
Psychism, pp. 159, 160] A famous case is that of Harriet Martineau, who has left a record of her own
experience; she describes herself as reduced to the last state of weakness, a life passed between bed
and the sofa". All that medical skill could do was done, and she was continually dependent on opiates.
She then put herself under mesmeric treatment, and at the end of four months I was, as far as my own
feelings could be any warrant, quite well. She describes her steady convalescence, improved
composure of nerve and spirits, and the help she found mesmerism to be in breaking off the use of
opiates". [Quoted in Newnham's Human Magnetism, pp. 421-427] Dr. Inglis of Halifax, cured a girl,
eleven years old, of epileptic fits, by daily inducing mesmeric sleep, [ibid., pp. 139, 140] a form of sleep
that is accompanied with marked recuperation of the bodily [Page 59] energies. Perhaps the most
remarkable use of magnetism, under this head, is its employment as an anaesthetic. One of the most
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famous operations performed on a mesmerized patient is the removal of the breast of an elderly French
lady, Madame Plantin, for cancer, in 1829. Madame Plantin's physician, Dr. Chapelain, was in the habit of
mesmerizing her, and he found that she would placidly discuss the advisability of the proposed
amputation when she was in the mesmeric trance, but shrank from it, when awake, with the most
intense anguish and apprehension". M. Jules Cloquet, an eminent surgeon of Paris, was chosen as
operator, and found his patient in the mesmeric trance on his arrival. "She spoke calmly of the intended
operation; removed her own dress to expose her bosom to the surgeon's knife; and during the operation,
which lasted about a quarter of an hour, she conversed freely with the surgeon, and the physician, who
was seated by her, supporting the arm on the diseased side, without exhibiting the slightest pain or
consciousness of what was going on". She was kept under mesmerism for two days, and [Page 60] the
wound began to heal in a healthy manner but the patient died fourteen days later from another disease.
[Somnolism and Hypnotism, pp. 45, 46] In 1851 Broca and FoIlin mesmerized a woman to make an
incision in an abscess, and Guerineau, of Poitiers, amputated the thigh of a hypnotized patient. [Animal
Magnetism, by Binet and Fr, p. 77] It is obvious that this use of hypnotism might prove most
serviceable in cases in which chloroform cannot be employed without danger to life.
Carl Hansen has used mesmerism for the cure of nervous diseases of all sorts, for destroying by
suggestion rooted ideas amounting to mania, for calming the insane in fits fury, etc., etc.. In India, where
climatic influences are most favourable to the production of mesmeric phenomena, and among the
sensitive Hindus, Colonel Olcott has cured diseases literally by the hundred, paralysis, blindness,
deafness, dumbness, rheumatism and so on. The use of clairvoyance in the diagnosis and cure of
disease will be mentioned further on.
2. The exaltation of the physical senses and mental capacities. This class of cases is full [Page 61] of
instruction for the psychologist, for here, if anywhere, he can study mental phenomena apart from normal
conditions, though if he insists on invariably connecting states of consciousness with cell-vibrations, he
will find himself in parlous difficulties.
The quickening of the senses and of the mental capacities belongs to the lucid somnambulic condition,
not to that of lethargy. Binet and Fr say:
"The state of the senses in hypnotic subjects ranges from anaesthesia to hyperaesthesia. During lethargy
all the senses are suspended, with the occasional exception of the sense of hearing, which is sometimes
retained, as it is in natural sleep. During catalepsy, the special senses are partially awake; the muscular
sense, in particular, retains all its activity. Finally, in somnambulism the senses are not merely awake, but
quickened to an all extraordinary degree. Subjects feel the cold produced by breathing from the mouth at
a distance of several yards (Braid). Weber's compasses, applied to the skin, produce a two-fold
sensation, with a deviation of 3 degrees, in regions where, during the waking state, it [Page 62] would be
necessary to give the instruments deviation of 18 degrees (Berger). The activity of the senses of sight is
sometimes so great that the range of sight may be doubled, as well as the sharpness of vision. The
sense of smell may be developed so that the subject is able to discover by its aid the fragments of a
visiting card which had been given to him to smell before it was torn up (Taguet). The hearing is so acute
that conversation carried on the floor below, overheard". [Animal Magnetism, pp. 134.135]
Many of the extraordinary phenomena of clairvoyance appear to be directly related to this abnormal
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sensibility, the bounds of time and space being ultimately completely cast aside. A girl of seventeen,
named Jane Rider, was very carefully observed by her medical attendant, Dr. Belden; he found amid
many other curious facts that she could read and write with two wads of cotton-wool over her eyes,
coming down to the middle of the cheek, in close contact with the nose, and closely bound with a large
black handkerchief; thus blinded, she on one occasion wrote the [Page 63] words Stiff Billy, and then
correctly dotted the i in each word; wrote Springfield under them, leaving out the I, and went back and put
the missing letter in the right place. [ Isis Revelata, vol. i, p. 377] Schelling, the German philosopher,
relates a case he observed, in which a clairvoyante began to cry, and said that the death of a member of
the family had taken place at a distance of 150 leagues. She added that the letter announcing the death
was on its way. On awaking, she remembered nothing and was quite bright and cheerful, but when again
hypnotized she again wept over the death. A week later, Schelling found her crying, with a letter beside
her on the table, announcing the death, and on asking whether she had previously heard of his illness,
she answered that she had heard no such news of him, and that the intelligence was quite unexpected. [
ibid., vol. i, pp. 89, 92] Similar stories, vouched by names of the highest character, may be found by the
dozen in books dealing with these phenomena, so there is nothing unjustifiable in the statement of
Schopenhauer: " Who at this day doubts the [Page 64] facts of animal magnetism and its clairvoyance, is
not to be called sceptical, but ignorant". [Versucht uber Geisterschen]
A use of clairvoyance that has been too much neglected is its employment for the diagnosis of obscure
forms of disease. The Madame Plantin alluded to above had a daughter, Madame Lagandr, who was a
clairvoyante, and who visited her mother shortly before her death; she described the state of the right
lung and heart, the stomach and liver, describing the right lung as being shrivelled up, compressed, and
no longer breathing, and saying that there was water in the cavity of the heart. A post-mortem
examination was conducted on Madame Plantin's body in the presence of Dr. Drousart, M. Moreau
secretary to the surgical section of the Royal Academy of Medicine, Paris and Dr. Chapelain, by MM.
Cloquet and Pailloux. The state of the organs was found to exactly bear out the somnambule's
description. [See lsis Revelata, vol. ii. pp. 87-89; and The Philosophy of Mysticism by Du Prel, vol. 1, p.
236. A full account is given by Dr. Haddock in Somnolism and Psychism, pp. 54-56] Dr. Haddocks
somnambule, Emma, constantly diagnosed diseases for him, and indicated appropriate [Page 65]
remedies, which were applied with great success. [Somnolism and Psychism, Chap. 7] Here, again, a
mass of evidence is available for all who desire to further study the subject. Dr. Sprengel, Dr. Brandis, Dr.
Georget, and other physicians equally eminent, have advocated the employment of somnambulists for
the diagnosis of disease.
Passing from the senses to the more intellectual faculties, we find that the memory becomes, to an
extraordinary degree, retentive under hypnotism: a poem was read over to a hypnotized subject and she
was awakened; she could not remember it, but on being again hypnotized she repeated it correctly. At
the Salptrire a hypnotized subject gave the menu of dinners she had eaten a week previously. A
hypnotized girl, in Charcot's room, was asked the name of a man who entered the room, and at once
answered, "M. Parrot". She was awakened and again questioned, but said she did not know him; at last,
after looking at him for a long time, she said that she thought he was a physician at the Enfants assists
(as was the [Page 66] fact). It appeared that she had been a the Refuge when she was two years old, but
had naturally forgotten the physician: hypnotized, her memory promptly recalled even his name. [Binet
and Fr, pp. 136.137] Similarly, the general mental capacity quickened. The girl before mentioned, Jane
Rider, blindfolded carefully, was asked to learn backgammon; she consented, knowing nothing of the
game, learned it rapidly, and won the sixth game from an experienced player; awakened, she was asked
to play, but said she had never seen the game, and she could not even set the men. [ lsis Revelata, vol.
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i. pp.381, 382] Dr. Abercrombie gives a long account of a girl, whom he describes as "when awake, a
dull, awkward girl, very slow in receiving any kind of instruction, though much care was bestowed upon
her; but, when in the somnambulic condition, she often descanted with the utmost fluency and
correctness on a variety of topics, both political and religious, the news of the day, the historical parts of
Scripture, public characters, particularly the characters of members of the family and their visitors. In
these discussions [Page 67] she showed the most wonderful discrimination, often combined with sarcasm,
and astonishing powers of mimicry. Her language through the whole was fluent and correct, and her
illustrations often forcible and even eloquent. She was fond of illustrating her subjects by what she called
a fable, and in these her imagery was both appropriate and elegant. [ On the Intellectual Powers, pp.
296 et seq. Quoted in Isis Revelata]
Such facts as these, which might be multiplied a hundredfold, should surely give pause to the materialist,
who will have thought to be nothing more than the result of the vibration of brain-cells; and if it be
objected that, numerous as they are, these cases are yet exceptional and abnormal, we may fitly reply
with Herschell: The perfect observer will have his eyes, as it were, opened that they may be struck at
once with any occurrence which, according to received theories, ought not to happen, for these are the
facts which serve as clues to new discoveries. [Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural
Philosophy, Sec. 127]
3. The control of the subject by the operator. Here we come to the very heart of our [Page 68] question:
to the most marvellous facts, the most serious dangers, and the phenomena most luminous for
psychological discovery. This control of the hypnotized person by the hypnotizer is absolute, complete; as
Dr. Richer says, " The somnambulist ........ is no longer a simple machine. He is the slave of the will of
another, the veritable subject of the operator. His automatism consists in servitude and obedience". [
tudes Cliniques, p. 789]
Take first the senses. These can be so deceived as to sensate when there is no object of sensation, to
remain passive when stimuli are applied. The patient is plunged in the hypnotic trance; he is told that he
will see or not see, feel or not feel, a certain thing; he is then awakened, but the "suggestion continues to
dominate his intelligence, and, apparently acting freely, he blindly obeys. A hypnotized patient was told
that a bird was on her knee, and on awaking she stroked and caressed it; [ ibid., p. 645] another was told
that he had a lamp-shade placed between his hands, and on awaking he pressed his hands against the
[Page 69] imaginary object, and could not bring them together; [Binet and Fr, p. 213] a card was placed
on a sheet of white paper, and an imaginary line drawn round the card on the paper with a blunt pointer,
the pointer not quite touching the paper; when the subject awoke, the blank paper was given to her, and
she saw the rectangle which had not been traced on it, and, on request, she folded the paper along the
lines she saw, folding it to the exact size of the card. [tudes Cliniques, p. 723]
The reality of the hallucination is strikingly shown by an experiment in which the subject was told that
there was a portrait on a piece of blank cardboard; when she awoke she saw the portrait, when the
cardboard was turned round the portrait was reversed, and when the other side of the cardboard was
shown nothing was seen, although these changes of position were made out of sight of the patient.
[Binet and Fr, p. 224] Even more strange is it that such an imaginary portrait is seen magnified or
diminished if looked at by the subject through an opera-glass. A patient was told that Dr. Charcot was
[Page 70] present when he was absent, and on awaking she addressed him; while another, told that she
could not see Dr. F., was unable to see him though in the room; she was given permission to leave the
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room, and Dr. F., placed himself in front of the door; she came in contact with him without seeing him,
and after making a second attempt to reach the door became alarmed at a resistance in the air she could
not understand, and refused to make any further effort; a hat placed on his head was seen by her as
suspended in the air, and a cloak he put on moved about "like a hollow puppet". [ ibid., pp. 306-308] I
have myself been rendered invisible in this way, with the quaintest of results.
Another class of experiments is the formation of hallucinatory complex visions. A patient was told that
Paradise was before her, and she described the Virgin Mary, the saints and angels, it being noticed that
the details of the vision in such cases varied with the belief and fancy of the subject. [ tudes Cliniques,
pp. 669 and 790] Another was made to see the devil; "she drew herself up, anger in her face, in a superb
pose of wrath and [Page 71] defiance. At the end of a few moments she uttered a piercing cry, and fled to
the other end of the room". [ ibid., p. 699, note] Another, described as a very respectable woman, the
mother of a family and very pious", was made to assume in turns the characters of a peasant, an actress
a very free-spoken one a general, and a priest. We have here the explanation of many of the
visions of nuns and others in a highly excited nervous condition; the upward-turned and fixed gaze is the
very one used by Braid for self-hypnotization, and the dominant idea would take the place of the
suggestion.
Absolute physical lesion can be caused by suggestion. Charcot and his assistants have produced the
physical effects of a burn by suggesting to a hypnotized patient that she has burned herself; a doctor
traced some words with a blunt probe on the arm of a hypnotized subject, and told him that at four o'clock
blood would come out on the lines traced; at the time named the words appeared in red, with minute
spots of blood. Surely we have here the explanation of the appearance of the [Page 72] "sacred stigmata"
on ecstatic men and women meditating long on the passion of Christ.
Just as the body can be affected and the sense deceived, so can the inner sanctuary of the mind be
invaded, and the will of the operator take the place of the paralysed volition of the subject. Then comes
the possibility of suggesting action, action that may be either criminal or salutary. At the Salptrire and
elsewhere suggestion of crime has been made and carried out after the subject has awaked; thus, told to
poison one of the doctors with a glass containing water, the subject, after awaking, took the glass to him
and offered him the water, with the remark that it was a hot day. Others have been made to stab one of
the doctors present, to steal, etc.. [Binet and Fr, pp. 286-291] Considerable cunning is evinced in the
way in which the suggestion is carried out so that the person under control becomes criminal of an
especially dangerous type; the more so that the hypnotizer can at will destroy all memory alike of the
suggestion and of the act. So serious to society has this new peril been considered, that both in Russia
and [Page 73] Germany a law has been passed forbidding the practice of hypnotism by any but duly,
authorized persons a law which it is absolutely impossible to enforce.
On the other hand, suggestion may be used for the most beneficial purposes. At Nancy, Dr. Libault and
his colleagues have used it to promote moral action and to check criminal propensities; and, lately, the
Rev. Mr. Tooth, of Croydon, has cured by suggestion confirmed dipsomaniacs. He suggests to them,
while in the hypnotic trance, that drink is unpleasant to them, that it is nauseous and will make them sick;
and in the waking state it has this effect upon them, so that they shrink from it with loathing. Truly there is
here a mighty power for weal woe, according as it is used by pure or corrupt hands
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- III - THE EXPLANATION

To the great majority of people the above facts are inexplicable, and it is noteworthy that the French
experimenters offer no explanation of the facts they record. The explanation [Page 74] which I suggest, as
a Theosophist, will be only a possible hypothesis for most of my readers, and will be promptly rejected by
such of these as are Materialists.
We must now distinguish between Magnetism and Hypnotism, which, though closely allied by the
phenomena they produce, are yet distinct in the agency employed. Animal Magnetism is, in its nature,
nearly related to Mineral Magnetism, and is visible to the sensitive as light, as is the latter. Baron
Reichenbach's famous researches proved that persons in a hyperaesthetic state could, when placed in a
perfectly dark room, see a magnet by the luminosity surrounding it, a luminosity specially marked at the
poles. [ Physico-Physiological Researches in the Dynamic of Magnetism, etc., in their Relations to Vital
Force". Translated from the German by John Ashburner, M.D., Ed.. 1853] He found also that a similar
luminosity is visible from the human hands, "brushes" being perceptible coming from the points of the
fingers. This observation has been frequently repeated with clairvoyants, and the name of odyle, or odic
force, has been given this human magnetism. The reality of this current from the body was curiously
shown [Page 75] by the behaviour of a cat with Emma, Dr. Haddock's sensitive; the cat jumped on
Emma's lap when she had been mesmerized, and she began to stroke its head with her right hand. The
cat instantly began to evince signs of fear or pain, and. to cry in a peculiar half- piteous, half-savage
tone". The experiment was repeated with other cats and kittens, but some difficulty was experienced, "as
the animals always became savage, and endeavoured to bite". When Emma was "away", i.e., in the lucid
somnambulic state, the left hand similarly affected the cat, showing that the currents in the body were
reversed. [Somnolism and Psychism, pp. 109 -111 ]
No sign of any such current, or of the physical action of one human organism on another, has been
observed in connection with hypnotism; a certain stimulus applied to the nerves seems to set up a bodily
condition which is peculiarly sensitive to either internal or external stimuli; in the latter case the will of the
operator comes in as the active agent.
There is little doubt that the ganglionic, or sympathetic, nervous system plays a great part in
somnambulic phenomena, appearing [Page 76] indeed to act as the brain of the Sleep-Consciousness. In
an account given in the Lancet [ Vol. xxiii, pp. 663 et seq. ] of an Italian woman who suffered from
catalepsy, it is stated that the patient heard nothing by the ear, but "the lowest whisper directed on the
hollow of the hand, or sole of the foot, on the pit of the stomach, or along the traject of the sympathetic
nerve", was perfectly heard. Mr. Colquhoun remarks in many cases of catalepsy and somnambulism the
usual organs of the senses have been found to be entirely dormant, and the seat of general sensibility
transferred from the brain to the region of this ganglion, or cerebrum abdominale". [ Isis Revelata, Vol. ii,
p. 153] Du Prel remarks:
"Now, as waking consciousness proceeds parallel with corresponding changes of the senses and brain,
so the transcendental psychological functions seem to be parallel with corresponding changes in the
ganglionic system, whose central seat, the solar plexus, was already called by the ancients the seat of
the belly. With a somnambule of the physician Petitin, the pit of the stomach protruded [Page 77] like a
ball. Bertrand's somnambule said, pointing to her stomach, she had something there which spoke, and of
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which she could enquire....... A somnambule with Werner more particularly described the dualism of brain
and solar plexus, as it reveals itself on the transition to somnambulism. Before her senses were
suppressed, but while she was already gravitating towards somnambulism, she said: 'Where am I ?' I am
not at home in the head. There is a strange struggle between the pit of the stomach and the head; both
would prevail, both see and feel. That cannot be: it is a tearing asunder. It is as if I must send down the
head into the stomach if I would see anything. The pit of the stomach pains me if I think above; and yet
down there it is not clear enough. I must wonder, and that with the head, over the new disposition of the
stomach". [Philosophy of Mysticism, vol. i, pp. 170.171]
It is held by many, and I think rightly, that the cerebrum is one pole of the human magnet, and the plexus
solaris the other, although Reichenbach from insufficient, data, as it seems to me contended that
this axis is only [Page 78] secondary, and that the primary axis transverse.
If we now examine the human consciousness, we shall find it broadly divided into two, the Sleeping and
the Waking; all mesmeric, clairvoyant, hypnotic phenomena belong to the former, and the more complete
the quiescence imposed on the bodily functions, the more vivid and intense are the activities of the
"Sleep-Consciousness". One other point of grave significance should be noted: the hypnotized person on
awaking knows nothing, save rarely, of what happened in the hypnotic trance; but "when he is asleep his
memory embraces all the facts of his sleep, of his waking state, and of previous hypnotic sleeps. [Binet
and Fr, p. 135] This Sleep - Consciousness, as seen at work in the somnambulic state, has a memory
to which the waking memory is forgetfulness, can see in defiance of space and material obstruction, is
keenly intellectual where the waking brain is dull, is to the Waking - Consciousness as a giant beside a
dwarf. What is it, this luminous Eidolon which shines out the more brightly as the bodily frame is [Page 79]
unconscious ? I answer: it is the Inner Self, the true Individuality, the higher Ego, which dwells in the body
as the flame in the lamp, sending into the outer world such shafts of its radiance as can pierce its
covering.
This Consciousness of man is able to impress his physical brain and so become the WakingConsciousness, just so far as physical conditions admit; what the Germans call the psycho-physical
threshold divides, as it were, this Consciousness into two, not really dividing the Consciousness, but
dividing off the amount it can impress on the physical organism from that which the physical organism is
incapable of receiving. Of all that is below this threshold, the physical organism remains unconscious.
The contents of the Waking - Consciousness are, then, only part of the contents of the Total
Consciousness, and, indeed, a comparatively small part thereof. Now this threshold is variable, and
varies with the physical condition; and the more sensitive the nervous system, the more outward stimuli
are removed or the senses dulled to their reception, the more does this threshold sink, unveiling the
contents of [Page 80] the Total, the Real Consciousness. So far the second class of phenomena is
concerned, the exaltation of the senses and of the mental capacities, this hypothesis, worked out, will be
found to be, thoroughly explanatory. Once realize that the physical organs of sense are, as has been well
said, barriers between the inner senses, the perceptive faculties of the Inner Self, and the objective
world, that they are organs, not faculties, and it will be seen how their paralysis may make way for the
inner senses to function.
The third class of phenomena, the control of the individual by the operator, turns once more, as to the
hallucinations, on this movability of the threshold of sensation. Let us conceive of existence as one vast
line, which has spirit or force for one end and grossest matter for the other end, all phenomena,
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"material" and "immaterial, ranging between these not differing in essence, but in degree of
condensation so that condensed force would present itself as matter, rarefied matter as force. Let us
consider, next, that the universe, to us, exists as conceived, our conception [Page 81] depending on the
impression made by it on us through our senses. It will at once be seen that a thing will present itself to
us as matter or as force according as it can or cannot affect our senses; that which affects the senses
directly will be recognized as matter; that which is only apprehended by the mind through its effects will
be recognized as force. Whether the mental presentment of a thing is material or immaterial will depend,
then, on our sensibility and not on the thing itself, and the variation of our threshold of sensibility will
transfer a thing from the matter-world to the force-world, and vice versa. [See the admirable argument on
this subject in Du Prel's Philosophy of Mysticism. Vol. ii, pp. 130.135] Thus to our normal senses the
attraction between the magnet and all iron within the magnetic field is invisible and we speak of the force
of attraction: to the sensitive, or the somnambulist this force is visible as light. The senses condition the
nature of the perception. Then, to abnormally sharpened senses, a thought may become a material
object, force-vibrations becoming visible, i.e., appearing as matter. But if this be so, the [Page 82]
"hallucination" of the somnambulist, who sees a bird or a lamp-shade at the suggestion the hypnotizer,
results from her threshold of sensibility being so shifted that the normally immaterial thought becomes to
her material.
This hypothesis does not explain the paralysis of vision as to objects, or parts of objects, which is one of
the most startling hypnotic phenomena. For elucidation of this I am somewhat at a loss. Patanjali speaks
of the possibility of disconnecting "that property of Satwa which exhibits itself as luminousness" from the
organ of sight of the spectator; [Yoga Aphorisms, Ed. 1889, p. 31] and the ancient Hindus held that there
was this connection, so to speak, between the seer and the object seen. That an object can be made to
disappear, I know, having seen it done and having been made myself to disappear; for the explanation, I
am still groping. [Vide p. 24, ante; and Invisible Helpers, pp. 25, 26.. Ed.]
The control of acts is easier to understand, for here one can see that the Ego of the hypnotized person
may, as it were, be thrust aside and the Ego of the hypnotizer take its place, using the brain and limbs of
the subject [Page 83] as its tool. Be this as it may, the recognition of this true Ego, this Inner Self, acting in
and through the body, but its master, not its product, offers, at least, a hopeful path to the solution of the
abstruse problems that face us. That psychology should become in the West, as it is in the East, an
experimental science, must be the wish of every patient searcher after Truth.
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Hypnotism and Mesmerism

Hypnotism and Mesmerism

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Hypnotism and Mesmerism

Hypnotism and Mesmerism

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